Some properties of the distance function and a conjecture of De Giorgi (Q1769158)

The main aim is to prove the following De Giorgi conjecture [\textit{De Giorgi; E.}, Duke Math. J. 81, No. 2, 255--268 (1996; Zbl 0874.35027)]: Any compact \(n\)-dimensional regular submanifold \(M\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+m}\), without boundary, moving by the gradient (in the variational sense) of the functional \[ G_k(M)= \int_M 1+|\nabla^k \eta^M|^2\,dH^n, \] where \(\eta^M\) is the square of the distance function from \(M\) and \(H^n\) is the \(n\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+m}\), does not develop singularities in finite time if \(k> [n/2]+ 2\), where \([n/2]\) denotes the integer part of \(n/2\), is sufficient. By the way, the authors show some relations with the second fundamental form and its covariant derivatives of independent interest.